Over the past year or so, John and I have taken up running.  We started in September of 2008, taking a Learn to Run clinic at the Running Room. The clinic was great and the people even better, so we kept at it. I was sidelined for a few months, from November to March, with a knee injury that was caused by the simple fact that I was far too heavy.

In February 2009, I decided that I did not want to be a 34 year-old person who felt like she was 50. I was severely jealous of John, who had continued running. I was unhappy, unfit and the person on the outside had started to conquer the person inside of me, turning me into a miserable, fat lump. I tipped the scale at around 210lbs, which does not sit prettily on a 5′3″ tall woman, let me tell you!

Things had to change.

I resolved to modify my diet ever-so-slightly. Going with the basic assumption that losing weight involves burning more than you take in, I skimmed about 500 calories off my daily requirements. On days during which I exercised, I added 50-75% of the calories burned onto my allocation for the day. I never worried too much if I was over by 100-200 one day, as long as the week’s average worked out to under my limit.

For those starting out on this same journey, I suggest Spark People. It’s free, it’s useful and it really, really works. Others may find Weight Watchers helpful. The online version is great, but they’ll charge you for it!

I started by walking. I walked half an hour almost every day. At first I could only go slowly, but as time went on, I got faster and went further.

Bit by bit, the weight came off. When I had lost the first 15lbs, my knees stopped hurting. I started to find energy again and was so utterly thrilled with myself that I could hardly believe it.

My reward to myself for loosing those first 15 lbs was a membership at the YMCA. Weight training was added to my routine three times a week. I had trained with weights in the past and so knew enough of the theory to build my own routine. That said, I also picked up a copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Weight Training, which is a fabulous reference!

Then, on March 29, 2009, I picked up the Running Room manual that I had been given in September, reread the training programme and started running again……

I stopped writing this blog quite a while ago for a variety of reasons, most of which had to do with a lack of time, an abrupt change in lifestyle and working conditions and, frankly, running out of things about which to write.  Facebook also contributed to my blogless life, as it is much easier to post a ten-word status update than to formulate a coherent article.

Things have changed in our lives once again, however, and I find that I now not only have time in which to write, but things about which writing seems worthwhile. So off we go again, into the nether regions of my mind and life! I hope they help in some way!

Over the past couple of years I’ve been growing orchids again. Anyone who has engaged in the cultivation of these wee beasties knows that the conditions required for growth can be almost as assorted as the plants themselves. Growing (or rather, keeping them alive and in leaf) them is actually fairly easy. Getting them to bloom can be slightly trickier.

Over the past few months I’ve been able to see the results of my labours. Currently blooming are the first two below. The other two have just finished up. I particularly love the Zygopetalum – the scent of it wafts through the house throughout the day.

Zygopetalum Adelaide Charmer X Adelaide Meadows

Phragmipedium Eric Young
Phragmipedium (besseae x longifolium)

Miltassia Shelob ‘Tolkien’ AM/AOS

Dendrobium Mini Snowflake (aberrans x johnsoniae)

a quickr pickr post

We’ve just returned from a sojourn on Exploits Islands and it proved to be an interesting trip on many fronts.

To start with, though, a few black and white photos I took while there.

I found myself shooting in black and white quite a bit and it occurred to me afterwards that I’m grasping to retain the Exploits I remember; the resettled community. What is emerging now is a new, summer community with new houses and a new way of living.

There are relatively few of the old houses left, which is a crying shame, but perhaps is also an inevitable thing. Anyway, without further ado, here are some of the black and white shots. I’ll post some of the colour ones in my next post.

Home: Our house, as seen from the path.

A cottage on the other island at the intersection where the road to the lighthouse begins.

A well-ventilated barn (there were actually cows nearby, but I suspect they have other accommodations)

A large saltbox

The back of the same saltbox

Tilting: A house makes its way seawards on Exploits Islands, Notre Dame Bay, Newfoundland.

Silent as the… : The first cemetery you come to when taking the inland road on the eastern island. A warning: the second cemetery, further inland, has a one-beam bridge over which you must pass to access the site. The near side has a hornets’ nest under it as of August 2008! It is not visible until you walk on the beam and then out they come!

Exploits Islands, Notre Dame Bay, Newfoundland.

One of the cemeteries…

From our front deck: Ball Point and Squid Cove, Exploits Islands, Notre Dame Bay, Newfoundland.

That wharf, she be leaving

Sunset through aspen

a quickr pickr post

Lately we’ve been spending a good bit of time working on projects around the house. We repainted and reworked the living room:

Then we redid Katherine’s room:

After that there were some minor changes, such as a new faucet for the kitchen, refinishing the kitchen table and setting up the grow-lights for plants in the basement.

This past weekend we started in on our bedroom floor. When we moved in, the floor was covered in white berber carpet. The room also contains a door that opens onto the back yard. There was no deck, nor was there grass. The backyard, at the time in which we moved in, was a mud pit. The carpet, therefore, did not remain white for very long.

We’d been meaning to replace the carpet with laminate for some time, but 187.5 square feet was a lot of flooring to purchase on limited budgets. Then I switched jobs. I no longer work at a call centre (thank merciful heavens!), but am much more happily employed in the greenhouse and garden centre at a local hardware store. This places me in a fabulous position to spot excellent deals, such as clearance/marked down laminate. We got all the materials, install kit and underlay included, to do 225 square feet for 159$, taxes in.

So the room looked like this last night:

We should be able to finish it off by tonight. Yay!

Since May, I’ve had relatively little time to post. I suppose I could have made more time, but family, being outside, work and the mundane vagaries of everyday living always seemed to get in the way. The main factor has been adding a forty-hour per week job to my already full life.

In May I decided that I was finding increasingly less joy in creating and also worn down by the erratic nature of the pay of self-employment. I decided that a change was in order, at least temporarily, to remedy both my need for a break and my desire to have a steady pay cheque while taking that break. I have been working full-time as a customer service rep for a telecom service provider, working in both the wireless/cellular and consolidating billing sectors. That’s pretty much all I’m going to say about work here, really, as it’s a dangerous proposition to make any comments about your job online when you work for a large company. It’s a decent job, the money is good and it serves my purposes at present. I’ve been able to resume making things on a limited scale to maintain stock in various shops and find that I once again like my art work, which is a huge step forward.

So that’s why I’ve been not writing much; I’ve been working and taking a break from my art work to rejuvenate both my creative energies and my bank account. Both are becoming increasingly healthy and our family life is now settling in to the pattern of my night shifts again after some recent weeks of up-training.

Otherwise, John and I have been doing things around the house, dejunking the basement of years of accumulated crap and spending time with each other and Katherine. It’s been a busy, but good, summer. John has a new job in Churchill Square with John F. Dawson Law Office, which he loves and just the lack of a commute across the north-east Avalon from Torbay is making the world of difference in our lives (he was driving to CBS before).

Katherine is growing beyond measure. Her recent fascination is with the body and how all the parts work. She will regale any who stop with vivid descriptions of how the nervous system works, what happens to your food from top to bottom and how your eyes are connected to your brain. Makes for great conversations at restaurants.

More as I think on it…..

Katherine, who understands about as much as she wants to of the ways of birds and bees, uttered the following just now,

“A long time ago, Heather was very, very married and then Jean and Eleanor were both born.”

Thankfully, Heather is just as very married now, although without more of Katherine’s suggested consequences.

Over the past month or so, I haven’t spent much of my spare time in front of a computer. Between Katherine, the dogs, the garden, the unexpected arrival of summer and spending time with John, my free time has more or less vanished. I suspect it’s primarily due to the nice weather and the intensive garden work I’ve been doing; if the sun is shining, I’d as soon be out in it as indoors observing. I’ve been reading blogs, but just not stopping long enough to write.

So I am still here, never fear. Now that life seems to have slowed to a screeching dull roar, I’ll be able to find time for posting again.

In the meanwhile, I must get back out there. I have tomatoes that need plantin’ and weeds what need killin’.

It’s spring cleaning week around here, which means that I do all those things that get done weekly such as cleaning the bathroom, mopping the floors, and vacuuming, as well as those things that I typically never get to (cleaning the heat core and screens of the air exchange, washing walls, cleaning curtains, touching up paint dings on walls). Since I’m at it anyway, I thought I’d write a post or two, depending on how things go, on cleaning.

Watch, as my reader numbers take a spectacular dip!

During university, I spent a strange summer in Alberta working in a hotel. One of the truly useful things I learned that summer was how to clean quickly and well. In particular, I learned how to clean a typical, basic bathroom in five minutes (and how to make a queen-sized bed myself in under two). Now when bathrooms are cleaned daily, they’re a lot easier to clean (tip 1: clean them more frequently to do them more quickly). You’d be amazed at how long it took me for this lesson to sink in. So keeping in mind that most of us don’t clean the bath daily (and if you do, you are probably reading the wrong blog), let’s allow ten minutes; fifteen if you have a large bathroom or some special fiddly features.

Everyone has ten minutes somewhere that they’re not using, like when you’re waiting for water to boil for pasta, or simply between tasks. Bathrooms are one of the things you can knock out of the water during that time. I’m not kidding.

The hardest part is making yourself start. The trick there is not to think about it. Don’t ask yourself if you really want to. Don’t groan about how you don’t feel like it. I’ve learned that I’m an expert at talking myself out of doing things. I’ve also learned to no longer ask myself stupid questions. Do I feel like it? Of course not. Does that matter? Not really.

How to Clean a Bathroom in Ten Minutes

(because you’re simply dying to know, right?)

Before you start, assemble your kit.

Once assembled, keep it together under the bathroom sink.:

• rags (five is plenty – I use old towels, chopped down to size and old cloth diapers). Paper towels are okay, but really don’t clean as well AND are hard on trees.
• cleaning solution in a squirt bottle (I use no-name Mr. Clean clone)
• window cleaning solution
• bleach
• toilet brush
• large flat box or rubbermaid tub (you can store your cleaning supplies in it!)
• vacuum cleaner or broom
• garbage bag

1. Go into the bathroom. Dump garbage can contents into garbage bag. Vacuum or sweep floor.
2. Take all the stuff off the sink counter and surrounding area (especially toothbrushes!) and put into your box or tub.
3. Spray mirror all over with window cleaning solution
4. Spray counter and sink all over with cleaning fluid.
5. Remove all stuff from shower/bath and put in box or tub. Gather up any books or magazines around the toilet and put in box or tub. Put outside bathroom.
6. Spray shower or bath all over with cleaning fluid.
7. Spray toilet as follows
   1. spray tank
   2. spray lid
   3. lift lid and spray underside of lid and seat
   4. life seat and spray underside of seat and bowl rim
   5. spray outside of bowl
8. Dump approximately a cup of bleach into the bowl
9. Get rag #1 – wipe down mirror (always start with the mirror so as not to leave streaks)
10. Working from least grungy to most and using a new rag for each, wipe down sink and counter (do door knobs then!), bathtub/shower (outside of tub, too!) and toilet tank (don’t forget the handle!), lid, seat, rim of bowl, outside. Put rags on floor as you finish.
11. For the shower tub, work top to bottom. Optional step: after you finish, close the shower curtain and turn the shower on (cold will do) and swivel the head around to rinse the tub and walls. Best done from outside the shower, reaching in.
12. Using toilet brush, scrub inside of toilet. Bleach generally works as well as most bowl cleaners, is cheaper and no worse for the environment. If you have a septic system, you may wish to use even less bleach than I state here. If you do, make sure to drizzle it around the inside of the bowl.
13. Spray floor behind toilet. Using rags on floor, wipe floor around toilet.
14. Working your way backwards, spray and wipe floor.
15. After floor dries, put stuff back in bathroom. Restock towels. Wash rags for next time.

There are, of course, other things that need doing, but not necessarily every week:

• Windows, for instance, can generally be done less frequently. Do them after the mirror, but before the counter/sink.
• Shower curtains can generally be machine-washed (even the plastic ones). Just use warm water.
• Cupboards need a periodic wipe.
• Walls need a scrub-down once in a while.
• Drains may need the odd cleaning, depending on your household.

Really, though, the trick is in the prep. Make sure you have everything you need ready-to-hand and spray surfaces down well before you get to them (but not so far in advance that the cleaner dries!). Cleaners work better when given a wee bit of time to penetrate grease and grime. I prefer to spray and wipe the floor (as opposed to mopping) as it’s one less set of tools to assemble and less water to deal with. Clean up is much quicker when you don’t have a bucket of grimy suds to dump (in your nice, clean toilet!).

Addendum: don’t judge how long it takes to clean a bathroom by the first time you do it – the first time always takes longer than it should

This morning I am engaged, in part, in spring cleaning.

One of the things that has been on my list for some time and to which I almost got yesterday was the putting away of winter clothes. I was just about to start packing away the snow suits, boots and heavy coats when I chanced a glance at the forecast. Snow. 2cm.

I hastily withdrew my intentions from the task of winter attire-packing. The snow never materialised.

Today it is cold, but sunny. There is no snow on the horizon according to environment Canada. In fact, our forecast here in Newfoundland (St. John’s area) reads like this:

5 Day Forecast from Environment Canada

St. John’s, Newfoundland

Which means nothing to folks anywhere warm, I know, but when you’ve just had your system paralysed by the mention of snow the day before, it looks pretty darned good. Wet and chilly, but not solid.

So anyway, today I am going to pack up the winter wear. If it the forecast mysteriously goes into spasms and it snows here tomorrow, I give you full leave to blame me.

I, personally, will pass all criticisms along to Environment Canada. Not that it will help, but maybe next year we’ll get the Deluxe Spring Package instead of this cheap model.

Last summer (sometime in July 2006) I completed the forms required to re-register for our provincial MCP (medical care plan).

At that time, I couldn’t find Katherine’s MCP card. In fact, I’m not sure she ever actually had one. I know she had a hospital card (got one when she was born) and was registered with MCP, but I’m pretty certain that we never had an actual physical card for her.

Anyway, as I said, I was filling out the forms and couldn’t find her card. So I dialed the handy-dandy number provided and asked the kind and harried folks on the line what I should do.

“Just fill in what you do have,” they said, “we’ll call you to straighten out any problems.”

Is it just me, or do other people have twitching spasms when someone in government says to wait for a call?

So I waited. In March 2007, I had heard nothing and was somewhat worried. Maybe my application had gotten lost? Maybe I was legally dead? Who knew what could be up.

I saw that the application deadline had been pushed back to July 2007, so I figured they were both inundated with applications and had completely lost track of the entire system. So I called.

“We’re still processing applications. There’s a backlog…..” silence.

“But I submitted in July of last year…?”

“A…… well…… a somewhat large backlog.”

And we left it at that. It’s May now. I just checked the mail and found a letter with two cards, mine and John’s. There was a note saying that Katherine’s hadn’t been processed because the date I listed for her birth date didn’t match their records.

I double-checked and, sure enough, I had miswritten her date of birth. Don’t ask me how I did it or why. All I knew was that a wave of nausea, the kind that precedes dealing with large, unwieldy bureaucracies, was washing over me, dragging a pounding headache along with it.

To remedy this situation, the letter continued, I was to provide an original copy of her birth certificate as well as copies of all correspondence to MCP. Never mind that they had actually filled in the correct birth date on the form. Never mind that we are the ONLY Taylor-Hood family in the country. Never mind that they were the ones that filled in the actual MCP number for Katherine on the form. They sent me an edited copy, you see. Complete, with the information I’d left out or gotten wrong penned in.

So I phoned, hoping against all hope that I wouldn’t have to spend a year in vital stats and $20 getting a new birth certificate.

“No ma’am, you have to return the correspondence with the birth certificate. An original birth certificate.”

We bandied back and forth briefly over the wherefores and whys of how one department couldn’t get that information from another until she finally passed the buck, “Maybe you’d better talk to The Supervisor.”

The Supervisor wasn’t in, so I left a brief message admitting that I was a complete tool for miswriting my daughter’s birth date and wasn’t there some sneaky, underhanded beaurocratic way around this without not making boneheads like me wade through the governmental  quagmire that is Paperwork?

Five minutes later, a chuckling fellow calls and says just to send back the form, complete with note about the mistake made and they’d fix it, sans birth certificate. There were no sneaky tricks that would work in this particular quagmire, he declaimed. Quite nobly, he refrained from confirming my status as bonehead.

If I wanted, he mentioned casually, I could drop over to their office and they’d fix it on the spot tomorrow and print off my card right then and there. They rarely have a line-up and it’d take about five minutes.

Apparently this happens dozens upon dozens of times a day.

Today’s lesson, boys and girls, is always deal with a supervisor in any situation that isn’t completely, 100% normal. The drones will kill you every time.

The most recent pair of socks is still on the needles. Lava Flow (in pdf, by Sockbug) is a quick and easy pattern that I chose because I needed

1. to try out my new Brittany birch knitting needles on a fine sock yarn and I’ve never really been able to conquer Confetti (until now).
2. I have two pairs-worth of Confetti that needs conquering before I allow myself to move on to more alluring prospects like the Fleece Artist I was sent for my birthday.
3. I like this yarn’s colours, but the striping in plain stockinette wasn’t working for me. It was boring. This pattern fixed that. (See? Dull, but nice colours.)



4. I needed something to knit while chatting and hanging out and this pattern was simple, yet attractive.

So Lava Flow is ongoing. Natasha casually mentioned that she couldn’t picture what it might look like, so for her I post the following pictures. This pattern is really all about the yarn, which is a nice change from a pattern that is all about the stitch.

The only change I made was in the heel. The pattern called for a short-row heel, which really didn’t look good in this yarn (probably for the same reason that the yarn in stockinette didn’t look good; wide stripes without interesting patterns). I changed it to a sl1, k1neel flap which blends nicely with the overall patterning.

In other news, I was looking up various things for this post and discovered that Wool trends has a new sock yarn in. So much for “no new wool…”

a quickr pickr post

Recipe courtesy of David Dempster

A good friend gave us this recipe, which I have made far too frequently as of late, much to the delight of the folks at John’s office (hi guys!). As requested, here’s how to make Dundonian shortbreads (Dundonian = someone from Dundee, Scotland, in case you were perplexed).

Prep. and notes before starting:

• grease a 10″ x 10″ pan & “flour” it with sugar (you do this by dumping 1/8 cup of sugar into the greased pan and swishing it around until the inside of the pan is coated. Leave the excess in there.
• preheat oven to 350F
• I always double this recipe. If you do, too, use a larger pan.
• you can add chocolate chips, if you like
• 1/2 Tbsp of ground ginger makes a nice addition, as does candied ginger pressed onto the top.
• to make chocolate shortbreads, substitute 1/3 cup of cocoa for 1/3 cup of flour
• you can substitute oat flour instead of corn starch
• this recipe makes an excellent cheesecake crust
• for truly exotic times, half-dip the finished bars in melted chocolate

Ingredients (for basic recipe):

• 12 oz white flour (approx. 2 1/3 cup)
• 4 oz corn starch (approx. 2/3 to 3/4 cup – somewhere in-between works well)
• 4 oz granulated white sugar (extra fine, if you have it – not icing sugar, which has cornstarch added)
• 8 oz cold butter (1 cup)

Directions:

1. Dump flour, sugar, cornstarch into bowl.
2. Mix with fingers.
3. Add butter. Rub into mixture with fingers until the consistency of fine crumbs.
4. Dump the works into the prepared pan and tamp down with a spatula (I use a potato masher).
5. Slide into oven.
6. Cook for 20 minutes. Check to see if edges are slightly golden (they probably won’t be, but ovens vary). If edges are not at all golden, shove back in until they are (up to ten more minutes).
7. When edges are golden, remove from over.
8. Let sit for 3 to 4 minutes.
9. Press down with potato masher or spatula again.
10. Sprinkle with sugar (optional, but yummy).
11. Let sit for another 10 minutes, then cut into squares or fingers or whatever other bar-shape tickles your fancy.
12. Allow dish to cool on cooling rack. After cool, store in airtight container.

Enjoy!

I am, in the spirit of spring, clearing out some stock from my studio. You can see the first lot posted here.

All of the stock is of good quality. There is nothing wrong with it other than I simply need the space (both physical and creative) more than the stock at present.

It’s funny how sometimes you take the same photographs of the same places and, without even realising it, track the seasons of time through those pictures.

One of the views that always strikes me as particularly dramatic is that of Whaleback Rock here in Torbay. I walk over the crest of the hill on our street and the ocean is before me. Another five minutes by foot and I am engulfed in the visually stunning combination of blue ocean, craggy cliffs and sweeping hillsides.

So without further ado, here are some of the many photos that I’ve taken from roughly this same point of view:

April 26, 2006

Feb 12, 2006

Oct 21, 2005

Oct 21, 2005

Oct 21,2005

And for a bit of a twist:

Oct 3, 2005 (taken from the other side of the bight)

Starting the Gallows Cove portion of the East Coast Trail.

a quickr pickr post